detrocks

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It's sad to see guys that are producing leave, but the current team wasn't going to get any better. They were on their way to becoming the post-WS Phillies by hanging on to guys too long-- they still might be given the Verlander and Cabrera contracts, but at least they're trying.

Not sure if they're getting enough for the players they're giving up but given the changing value that teams are placing on rentals vis-a-vis young players, I'm also not sure how much more could have been expected.

It's sad to see guys that are producing leave, but the current team wasn't going to get any better. They were on their way to becoming the post-WS Phillies by hanging on to guys too long-- they still might be given the Verlander and Cabrera contracts, but at least they're trying.

Not sure if they're getting enough for the players they're giving up but given the changing value that teams are placing on rentals vis-a-vis young players, I'm also not sure how much more could have been expected.

I work in Fort Worth. I don't know the extent of a gas shortage in the DFW area, but I can tell you tthat one of my co-workers had to go to four stations before finding one that had gas. Another had to wait an hour in line to get gas.

My guess is that even if there isn't a gas shortage, the mere thought of one will lead to long lines and high prices this weekend.

Barnett may be a great talent but we've got a ton of talent at QB with Speight, O'Korn, Peters and McCaffery. More is better, but not sure we need him.

Also, given that he just left Alabama because he didn't want to compete with Hurts, it's hard to see him looking at our depth chart and finding it appealing when there are a lot of other high level programs that are hurting for QB talent. Just looking at the list of schools listed in that article, all of them have a much clearer path to starting QB than we do.

If I had to guess, I'd say he ends up at Oregon. He was interested in them before he committed to ND (and then to Alabama), they have nothing at QB after Prukop and don't have anyone commited in their class yet.

I haven't heard anything about us recruiting Simmons or him having any interest in us. Simmons's future seems to be at either LB or RB. We're full on the RB side, with the only guys being recruiting are swing for the fences guys like Najee Harris. On the LB side, we're in on a lot of guys and haven't heard his name among them.

Simmons would have been a nice addition to the class, but it never felt like the staff prioritized him the way that OSU did, so I can understand why he's going there.

I don't think any of them are close and the Lions are probably the furthest away at the moment. However, the NFL is the league where you can turnaround and build a contender in the shortest amount of time. If Quinn can bring that NE magic to Detroit, they could turn into a contender sooner rather than later.

Overall thoughts:

1. Lions- As noted above, they don't seem close but there are several recent examples of teams being terrible for extended periods of time and quickly jumping into contention: the 49ers pre-Harbaugh, the Seahawks pre-Caroll, the Saints pre-Payton, etc. You get the right front office and the right coach and you can contend pretty quickly. Not sure the Lions have either, but it could happen.

2. Wings- Historically good front office, some good prospects at GR, new arena coming up. However, they seem to be in neutral. Core players like Zetterberg and Kronwall are rapidly aging. They've had some young players come into the lineup but other than Larkin and maybe Mrazek, not sure anyone looks like a star. DeKeyser, Shehan, Nyquist, Smith don't seem to be developing much. Also, they can't get any game changing FAs to look at them.

3. Pistons- They have a good young core, but not I'm sure there's enough upside to get them into the top 4 into the East. I can see them becoming another version of the Chicago Bulls team from the last couple of years. Consistent, contending but never able to break though, never able to draft high enough and then everyone gets old, expensive and/or injured and all of a sudden your window closes.

4. Tigers- Probably the most talented team in Detroit right now, but they don't seem to have enough consistency to get it done this year. Most of their star players are on the wrong side of 30, the Cabrera and Verlander contracts are unlikely to age well and the farm system is bad. I could see them contending this year, maybe next, but also wouldn't be surprised to see them fall into a Phillies-like cliff with all the old players/poor farm system.

A lot of the thoughts regarding the Swenson situation specifically and recruiting in general seem to focus on 'PULLING OPPORTUNITIES IS IMMORAL' or "WIN AT ALL COST OF GTFO."

There is a lot of middle ground. I don't think there's anything wrong with pulling a scholarship or putting a guy on grayshirt as long as therej's a clear and honest expectation between the two parties. My thoughts on the Swenson situation would vary significantly based on how it played out.

If the coaches were telling him all this time that everything was good,. He visits several times and hears everything was good. Drevno visits his school on 12/5 (per 247 Sports) and tells him everything is good--- and then they just call him this week out of the blue and said we're moving in a different direction-- yeah, that kind of sucks.

On the other hand, if they laid out a clear expectation that yes, you have a scholarship offer. It is contingent on us seeing improvement in your play. Based on timing, we might not be able to give you a definitive answer until January. It's not a guarantee, so if you decide to look around, we will definitely understand. They look at his tape and see that he didn't improve and Drevno gives him the news when he visits the school.--- that's a completely different story.

I would like to think that it's the latter scenario. Given the fact that Michigan needs several OL and doesn't have anyone close to taking his place, that scenario would seem to make the most sense to me. As someone who wants to see the team win and to do it well-- I hope that's the case.

If you're trying to show examples of where the staff screwed a kid or where the situatiion ended up badly for the kid, you didn't choose very well.

Pipkins was told in June that the staff thought he should take a Medical Hardship. They gave the option to stay and finish his degree or plenty of time to transfer. Michigan didn't get any advantage by letting him go from a scholarship numbers perspective.

By various reports, Falcon was asked by the staff to pass on playing his senior year and focus on rehab. He decided to play and got injured. Based on that the staff pulled his offer in October-- four and a half months before signing day. They also offered him the opportunity to go on medical and get a free education at Michigan.

Colter is an example of the team breaking up with him where it turned out pretty well for the player. He ended up getting a degree from one of the best universities in the country and also ended up one of NU's best offensive players in a long time.

Not sure what happened with Swenson, but to say that the staff definitely screwed him by pointing at Pipkins or Falcon or saying that it's not going to work out for the kid by pointing at Colter definitely doesn't make sense.

Wonder if Gary Andersen makes a run to bring Aranda to OSU to replace Sitake? I assume that he tried to bring him when he moved last year, so not sure if anything's changed to get him to go now. Still, have to assume that's who he would want.

Simply deciding on the NFL shouldn't make him a villian. However, if it comes out that he was never considering coming to Michigan and only used us to drive up his next NFL contract? Well, that would be a little harder to take.

I'm surprised to hear people think that 7 or 8 wins would be good next year under Harbaugh or any new coach for that matter. As bad as this year has been, we were just a couple of plays away in the Rutgers and Maryland games from having 7 wins right now.

Even though we're breaking in a new QB, we have a lot of talent coming back on both sides of the ball. Also, while the non-conference schedule should be more difficult, we still have three games at home. The B1G schedule will also be better as our toughest games are at home.

If Hoke were here, I would expect 7 wins from those factors alone. If we get a new coach, I'll be disappointed if we don't do a couple of games better than that.

Yeah, if football hires are what you're considering, Bates hired Shane Montgomery, Mike Haywood and Don Treadwell at Miami, all of whom were disasters. Addazio seems to be working out better at BC. Phillips hired Jerry Kill, which turned out much better.

Now, Long hired Bobby Petrino and Bret Bielema (pretending the John L Smith era never happened). Good hires--character issues notwithstanding.

Being in the Chicago area, I can say that Phillips is pretty well regarded here. He had a good stint at Northern Illinois, where he was probably best known for hiring Jerry Kill, who was at that time a pretty unknown coach at Southern Illinois.

Since coming to NU, he's helped to drive the planning and development for their new lakefront facilities which look like they're going to be awesome. He inherited Fitz so unclear how he would approach hiring a football coach at the B10 level, but the Kill hire at NIU was a winner. He probably stuck with Carmody too long and the jury is still out in Collins but we have Belein so we're fine.

Unlike Brandon, Phillips has a lot of background in college athletics working at Arizona State, Tennessee and Notre Dame before going to NIU. He also seems pretty media savvy, which would be a nice change. He's definitely a Midwest guy as an Illinois grad and has been mentioned for AD openings at Illinois and Penn State in the past. Salary at NU is around $750k according to the Chicago Tribune.

This is a ridiculous statement. We may not be in great shape right now, but let's keep things in perspective. We're not nearly in the hole that Penn State was after Sandusky and they were able to get not one, but two great coaches in O'Brian and Franklin.

Even if you don't take the history into account, Michigan is a top job just based on our facilities, salaries that we'll pay for a head coach and assistants, talent on board (at least based on stars), etc. The attractiveness of the job will also increase if Brandon leaves.

We may not be able to lure a coach from an elite program that can offer a lot of the same advantages, but that's a huge difference from a coach needing to be out of their mind to accept this position or that we'll need to take a complete flyer on a guy the way that OSU did with Tressel.

The article is fine, but there's nothing there that hasn't been completely played to death already. In terms of the "some" who figure that there's no way Michigan keeps Hoke barring a miraculous turnaround, I can only imagine that's the author trolling just about every Michigan board on the internet.

As someone living in Chicago, there's nothing at all about Fitz's job being remotely in jeopardy, even with the awful loss to Cal.

In addition to being Mr. Northwestern due to his playing career and the way he took over after Randy Walker died, the overall perception is that he's done a good job. They win more than they lose and his players graduate-- which is pretty much a recipe for staying forever at NU. He also put togeher a nice recruiting class last year and has another nice one going this year, so the thought is that the future is bright.

The other thing working in his favor is that Northwestern doesn't fire coaches in a hurry-- this is the same school that kept Bill Carmody as coach for 13 years without an NCAA berth and a 32% conference winning percentage.

The only thing that could do him in is an academic/ off-field scandal or if the program totally tanks and NU wants to get a new coach as they rollout out their new football complex over the next couple of years.

I'm not sure why there's this clear need on this board to denigrate Izzo's accomplishments. Yeah, his standing with the media may outweigh reality, but calling him "Jud Heathcote 2.0" is ridiculous. Did he benefit from Michigan flaming out? Probably, but he's turned Michigan State into one of the best programs in the country, when it wasn't much of anything before he got there.

That being said, I think its reasonable to question where they go from here. I've never thought that there was "doing more with less" argument for his program (hello, that 's Mark Dantonio's meme). He's consistently gotten good players. He's not doing that now, so we'll see how far they go given the poor classes he's pulled in over the last couple of years.

Despite the success of his teams, given Izzo's lack of success getting players drafted, I'm not sure why a high ranking player would go to State at all. While Gary Harris will likely go in the 1st round, in the 19 years that Izzo has been at State, only 6 players have been drafted in the first round-- and only 2 have gone in the top 15. State hasn't had a player go in the first round since 2006.

As pointed out by the OP, it's not he hasn't had talent. Izzo's had tons of guys who came in highly ranked and ended up doing nothing in the pros such as Kelvin Torbert, Marcus Taylor, Paul Davis. Who is the last guy from State that was even a regular starter in the NBA? Jason Richardson? Zach Randolph? Izzo may win a lot of games, but his track record of getting guys to pros leaves much to be desired.

You expect to see a bunch of decommittments when you have a coaching change (Hi Vanderbilt!), but I don't think I've seen anything like this in a while. Seems like the off-the-field and on-the-field stuff has caught up to them.

Gopherfan-- I wouldn't say that I'm confident that Jones will flip from Minnesota but it definitely seems like there's a chance it could happen. He's expressed interest and Michigan's getting his last visit before signing day, which is a good sign. Even though he only recently got an offer, he has visited the campus before and knows the staff somewhat. Also, several analysts that follow this stuff a closer than I do are saying that Michigan is in a good position (Michigan has actually taken the lead in 247 Crystal Ball projections). The other factor is that Jones has always been a soft commit to Minnesota. I don't think that anyone would be surprised if he switched schools-- whether to Michigan or somewhere else.

That being said, he hasn't flipped anywhere else and Michigan is definitely getting in late. Given that, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't end up in AA. But I also wouldn't be surprised if he did end up there.

So if Devin is out, that means that Shane is #1 and I assume that Cleary moves up to #2. Who is the #3 guy? Is it Bellomy or Alex Swieca? Ordinarily, I would assume it would be Bellomy (given that he already used up his RS year as a FR), but given that he hasn't played at all this year and that he might have a chance for medical redshirt for a sixth year, would they keep him on the shelf and use Swieca? Might it even be Jeremy Gallon?

I will say that one of the few recruiting issues I've had with this staff is not picking up a QB in the 2012 class. That's the main reason that Shane had to burn his RS this year and is also directly responsible for us having either two walk-ons backing him up this game or having one walk-on and another guy that just started practicing.

Does anyone remember what happened with QB recruiting that year? I was looking on Touch the Banner and it listed several guys with offers. If I remember correctly, we finished second for Zeke Pike (which seems like a blessing now) and had somewhat of a shot with Gunnar Kiel (who seemed to cool on Michigan after Shane committed) and don't remember being close to getting any of the other guys. Did the staff just stop going after guys after Shane committed and we lost out on Pike and Kiel?

Dantonio's not going anywhere. He's got a good gig at State. Also, I think that his age and the lack of consistency in State's results are detriments to him getting a better job. I mean, he had those two outstanding years, but his overall head coaching record is 76-46, which is good but not great.

I think that the other thing to keep in mind is that there aren't a ton of jobs better than the one that he's got now. If you look at the BCS, there's only about four to six jobs in each conference that would either a lateral or an outright improvement over State. Those jobs don't turn over very often and when they do, they're often looking in-house or for the next big thing.

My guess is Narduzzi gets a HC job sometime. I bet he would have gotten the Cincy job had they not hired Tuberville.

Dantonio's not going anywhere. He's got a good gig at State. Also, I think that his age and the lack of consistency in State's results are detriments to him getting a better job. I mean, he had those two outstanding years, but his overall head coaching record is 76-46, which is good but not great.

I think that the other thing to keep in mind is that there aren't a ton of jobs better than the one that he's got now. If you look at the BCS, there's only about four to six jobs in each conference that would either a lateral or an outright improvement over State. Those jobs don't turn over very often and when they do, they're often looking in-house or for the next big thing.

My guess is Narduzzi gets a HC job sometime. I bet he would have gotten the Cincy job had they not hired Tuberville.